In the cryptocurrency market, meme coins, Real World Assets (RWA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominated the second quarter of 2024. As in the first quarter of the year, CoinGecko’s study states that these three trending themes accounted for 35.7% of the market share.
Solana and Base emerged as the most popular ecosystems, accounting for 22.9% of market interest. After flirting with all-time highs in Q1, the cryptocurrency market capitalization fell 14.4% in Q2, finishing June at $2.43 trillion.
Much anticipated fourth halving of Bitcoin went down without a hitch, but the market’s response wasn’t what was anticipated. A very turbulent quarter for Bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency market resulted from the optimism surrounding the US spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in Q1 fizzling out.
Bitcoin’s turbulent quarter
According to report, Bitcoin experienced difficulties in Q2, concluding the quarter at $62,734, a decrease of 11.9%. It fluctuated between $58,000 and $72,000, but it was unable to reach the record high of more than $73,000 that was observed in the middle of March.
In further dramatization, after hitting an all-time high of 721 million terahashes per second on April 23, Bitcoin’s mining hash rate fell by 18.8%, marking the first dip since Q2 2022. In spite of this, businesses continued to enter the AI space, including BitDigital, Hive, Hut 8, Terawulf, and Core Scientific. Block finished developing its 3nm mining chip, and Tether even declared a $500 million mining investment.
The daily average of bitcoin trading volume dropped to $26.6 billion, a 21.6% decrease from the previous quarter. The whole market was also volatile, with the annualized volatility of the cryptocurrency market at 48.2% and that of Bitcoin at 46.7%.
The focus is on AI and meme coins
Q2 saw a significant increase in market share for meme coins, RWAs, and AI. With a whopping 14.3% of the market share, meme coins emerged as the obvious winners. Memes have gotten so widespread that they were featured in four out of the top fifteen crypto tales. With a combined 22.9% market share, Solana and Base were at the forefront of blockchain ecosystems.
Ethereum was also very popular in the cryptocurrency community. Ethereum became inflationary in Q2, increasing 120,818 ETH to the total amount in circulation. The network became inflationary even though it burned 107,725 ETH and released 228,543 ETH.
Due to decreased network activity and declining gas prices, the burn rate fell by 66.7% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Burns exceeded emissions for just seven days in Q2 as opposed to 66 days in Q1.
Variations in exchange volume
The quarter was difficult for centralized exchanges; spot trading volume reached $3.40 trillion, down 12.2% from the first quarter. Despite the downturn, Binance continued to lead the CEX, finishing June with a 45% market share. Nevertheless, Bybit surpassed Upbit to take the second-largest spot CEX position with a 12.6% market share. Among the top 10 CEXs, Gate had the most boost, increasing trading volume by 51.1% to $85.2 billion.
Increases of 15.4% and 13.7%, respectively, were also observed for Bitget and HTX. New listings and project debuts on these exchanges also increased during this time. Things were starting to look up on the decentralized exchange front. DEXs saw spot trading volume of $370.7 billion, up 15.7% from the prior quarter. With 48% of the market, Uniswap controlled the DEX space.
Thruster, originally from Blast, witnessed a 464.4% increase in volume, and by June, it held a 3% market share. Aerodrome gained a 3% market share and expanded by 297.4%, not far behind. The increase in DEX volumes was largely caused by meme currencies and airdrops.
